Mark Ellwood's Brainy Blog of Fascinating Facts and Timely Tips

When do most employees work overtimes at the office? Do they go in early or do they stay late after work? If you want to catch them, what would be the best time to find them? Data from our work measurement studies provides some insights.

If one considers a “normal” work week for knowledge workers to begin at 9:00 a.m. and finish at 5:00 p.m., this would add up to 40 hours per week, including lunch and breaks.

We examined time and motion strudy data from employees who tracked their own time using the innovative TimeCorder device. All of the data is anonymous, so employees felt comfortable in tracking the time they spent on work activities. Across a broad range of industries, our data shows that the average employee works 46.7 hours per week. This means that they work just over an hour per day extra, assuming a base of a 40-hour week.

For this time study analysis, we looked at people who work more overtime hours than the average . Examining the pattern of activity among 235 employees who work over 50 hours, TimeCorder data shows the average time worked for this subset of workers is 55.5 hours per week. 72% of these hours (or 40 hours per week) are completed during the 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. period. Of the remainder, 19% occur prior to 9:00 a.m. and only 9% occur after 5:00 p.m.

So overtime work occurs more in the morning than in the evening.

An expanded work day shows the same pattern. When the bookends of the day are extended one hour earlier and one hour later, the result is a work day that stretches from 8:00 a.m. in the morning until 6:00 p.m. at night. Among those with high overtime hours, the total time worked during this period now represents 85% of all hours. Earlier in the morning than that, hours worked are equivalent to 10% of the total. Meanwhile later in the evening, overtime hours represent just 5% of the total.

Clearly, when people work long hours, there is a greater tendency to come in early and do their work before the start of the official work day. The chart below show the percent of time spent during each of the 24-hour periods of the day, starting at midnight, the “0” hour.

(On the chart, it appears as if work drop off in the afternoon. This is because some employees shift their hours by arriving very early in the morning and finish their day by 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. )

What does this mean for organizations? If they plan to provide snacks to those who work overtime, breakfast items may be more appropriate than dinner items. And if extra meetings need to be scheduled, employees may be more willing to come in early than to stay late. Finally, energy levels may be higher in the morning than at the end of a day when some employees have already worked ten hours or more.

Undestand the hours of work when you are most productive. Your time is worth it!

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Managers spend much of their time doing everything but managing. With all of the daily crises, pressures, and trivial tasks that are thrown at them, it is tough for the typical manager to stay focused on the things that are important. So it is not surprising that administrative tasks are a massive time hog.

The classical definition of the organizational manager is one who plans, organizes, coordinates and controls. However, the reality is that there are numerous, mundane activities that take up a manager’s time – some of which actually impede his or her productivity. Many of these non-priority tasks are unavoidable; they come with the job, but are never written in the job description. Managers try to focus on their priorities, but often get bogged down in the requirements of the job.

Administrative tasks are an unavoidable reality of work. In our time and motion study consulting projects, we define administrative tasks as those that don’t necessarily advance work toward achieving its major objectives, nor directly support these activities. Instead, they are necessary requirements of the job. They might support the operations of the organization, such as filling out time sheets, reports, and paperwork. They might support the dissemination of information, through internal, non-planning meetings. Or they might support other workers, providing assistance by answering questions or filling in for others.

The irony is that since we began conducting our time studies using the TimeCorder device in 1990, technology continues to proliferate; yet there is no reduction in administrative tasks. This is because for the manager, the computer is not an automation tool; it is an information-processing tool. With the increasing number of tools, or programs available, from word processing to spreadsheet analysis and presentation software, options have also increased. Now, more scenarios can be checked, more reports can be printed, and more data needs to be inputted.

As shown in the table below, the administrative burden is massive and takes up 11.6 hours of the manager’s work week. This is 25% of his or her time. The activities in this category are also very interruptive; 43 of them occur each week lasting 16 minutes each.

Administration is also an area where managers would like to spend considerably less time than they do. Managers spend 11.6 hours in administration time, but would ideally only like to spend 7.3 hours doing these activities. No one likes doing paperwork.

Administration time increases as one moves higher in the organization (see table below). Some of the time in this category is simply staying in touch through networking, writing and responding to e-mails or communicating with head office. Nonetheless, even when communication activities are excluded (some of which are routine and some of which are people management), administration for presidents is still 11.7 hours per week or 18% of the time.

ADMINISTRATION ACTIVITIES

Hours per week

Occasions

Duration in minutes

Ideal Hours

Difference vs. Ideal

Middle Manager

9.8

39

15

7.6

+2.2

Senior Manager

13.6

46

18

9.8

+3.8

Sales Manager

10.9

37

18

6.2

+4.7

President

14.1

26

32

14.8

-0.7

All Managers

11.6

43

16

7.3

+4.3

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Administrative activities are a massive time hog for managers. Prior to conducting our time studies, we ask managers in a questionnaire, “What are the most important things you need to do in your job?”. Their responses show that paperwork and administrative tasks are well down the list of managerial priorities cited. Typically, these activities are mentioned as a main priority by only 6% of managers. Clearly, handling paperwork is not what they perceive their job to be. Yet based on our work measurement studies, administration is the largest category of activities that a manager is engaged in.

Administrative tasks are not acknowledged in other analyses of managerial time, but are an unavoidable reality of work. In our time study consulting, we define administrative tasks as those that do not advance work toward achieving major objectives.. Instead, they are necessary requirements of the job. They might support the operations of the organization, such as filling out time sheets, reports, and paperwork. They might support the dissemination of information, through internal, non-planning meetings. Or they might support other workers, providing assistance by answering questions or filling in for others. Or they might be activities that could be delegated entirely to an assistant, to another department or to technology, with no changes to the manager’s performance.

In one of our questionnaires, managers are also asked “What things, outside of your control get in the way of your productivity?” Since we began asking the question in 1990, the issue of paperwork and administrative tasks continues to lead the responses to this question across all job categories. For managers and non-managers alike, the percentage is the same. 20% of respondents cite administration as an impediment. See Table 4 below for responses to the second open-ended question cited by more than 4% of managers.

What things outside of your control get in the way of your productivity?

Paperwork / administrative tasks

20%

Customer requests -service / problems / complaints

18%

Computer / system / equipment problems

14%

Changing priorities / ad hoc / unplanned projects

13%

Interruptions

12%

Staffing / HR issues / changes / people absent

12%

Phone calls / phone interruptions / inquiries

11%

Meetings – too many / too long / unnecessary

9%

Other depts. inefficient / make mistakes

7%

Volume of e-mail

6%

Fire fighting / emergencies

5%

Volume of work / not enough time

4%

Customers without appointments / walk-ins

4%

Central office visits, interruptions, requests

4%

The irony is that since 1990, computers and new software programs continue to proliferate; yet there is no reduction in administrative tasks. This is because for the manager, the computer is not an automation tool; it is an information-processing tool. With the increasing number of tools, or programs available, from word processing to spreadsheet analysis and presentation software, the options have also increased. Now, more scenarios can be checked out, more reports can be printed for review, more data needs to be inputted. It is no surprise then that the issue of paperwork and administrative tasks is seen as a huge impediment to productivity.

As shown in the table below, the administrative burden is massive and takes up 11.6 hours of the manager’s work week. This is 25% of his or her time. The activities in this category are also very interruptive; 43 of them occur each week lasting 16 minutes each.

Administration is also an area where managers would like to spend considerably less time than they do. Actual hours spent versus ideal expectations are the most dramatically different for this category compared to others. Managers spend 11.6 hours in administration time, but would ideally only like to spend 7.3 hours doing these activities. No one likes doing paperwork.

Administration time increases as one moves higher in the organization (see table below). Some of the time in this category is simply staying in touch through networking, writing and responding to e-mails or communicating with head office. Nonetheless, even when communication activities are excluded (some of which are routine and some of which are people management), administration for presidents is still 11.7 hours per week or 18% of the time.

ADMINISTRATION CATEGORY

Hours per week

Occasions

Duration in minutes

Ideal Hours

Difference vs. Ideal

Middle Manager

9.8

39

15

7.6

+2.2

Senior Manager

13.6

46

18

9.8

+3.8

Sales Manager

10.9

37

18

6.2

+4.7

President

14.1

26

32

14.8

-0.7

All Managers

11.6

43

16

7.3

+4.3

How do employees spend their time in your organization. Conducting a time and motion study is a powerful diagnostic tool to identify productivity hurdles on your way to increasing effectiviness, gettting more done, and increasing profits.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

We have been collectiong time study data since 1990, and have recently taken an interest in overtime hours. We were interested in what constitutes a typical work week for knowledge workers.

Our definition of knowledge workers mostly includes people who work in offices; managers, sales reps, service reps, researchers, engineers, supervisors, university faculty, municipal employees, and many others.

Our definition of a work week includes all of the work an employee is contracted to do during the day, plus overtime hours and weekend work. It includes lunch and breaks during the regular workday, but not after hours. Lunch and breaks typically take up about 4.5 hours per week, so a truer figure for work time might exclude this. Commuting is not included, because it varies by employee.

Our data includes results from TimeCorder data from time studies since 1990. Over that period of time the typical work week is 46.7 hours per week. That doesn't sound like a massive amount. But bear in mind. If you're working 9 to 5 every single day of the week, and then staying one extra hour right through to 6:00 p.m. every day, then you're actually a bit below the average. And our database includes a large number of service employees who only work about 43 hours per week. Their results tend to pull the average down. Our time and motion studies show that managers work about 50 hours per week - that's at least two solid hours of overtime every single day.

So how do overtime hours break down across large groups of employees. We've classified different amounts of overtime in the bar chart below. And since some full-time employees work slightly fewer than 40 hours per week, we've classified them as "undertime"

Excluding part time workers (i.e. those who work less than 30 hours per week), the percentage breakdown among those we have measured is as follows:

Categories of Hours Worked Per Week

We consider anything above 80 hours to be “danger time” because sustained activitiy at this level is likely to be dangerous to health, relationships, and even mental stability. Our database shows 0% for this group because our focus is on corporate employees. But there are entrepreneurs, partners, and those involved in urgent projects who occasionally work those long hours. Our best advice for those who work danger hours is: Get a life – outside of work!

Long work hours are simply not sustainable over the long term. If you're in that group, it's time to look at your time management for efficiencies. And you can always start by tracking your time - conduct your own personal time and motion study to measure your productivity. Sometimes awareness leads to better results. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

There are many ways that managers add value to the companies they work for. Too bad they only do it for three-fifths of the time.

The pie chart below is based on our time and motion studies of 565 different activities measured by managers since 1990. These activities are combined into 12 major categories.

The participants are managers from 38 different job types; sales managers, bank managers, vice presidents, construction supervisors and others. All of them are responsible for managing people.

These managers each tracked about 15-25 activities, corresponding with alphabet letters on our proprietary TimeCorder device. Each manager typically conducted a time and motion study of his or her own time for two weeks. The categories that appear on the pie chart each consist of a number of individual activities.

Ask managers what they do, and they will tell you that they need to be coaching, supervising, managing operations, planning for the long term, etc. These high priority activities fall into the first 7 categories clockwise (people management, strategy / analysis, planning, selling, customer administration, customer service, and operations)

Altogether, these pie segments show that only 59% of a manager’s time is spent on activities that add value. The rest are administrative, internal, travel, training (oneself) travel, personal time and miscellaneous activities. These do not directly add value to the organization.

Companies need to recognize that operating at 100% efficiency or 100% capacity is simply not feasible. Time for long term priorities and daily responsibilities is limited. Numerous “requirements” or burdensome tasks will inevitably eat up time that managers would like to allocate to their priorities.

These job “requirements” are the unwritten or administrative tasks that are a necessary part of being an employee in the organization or that must get done eventually. These include administration, training, travel, personal time and miscellaneous activities. For managers, they can account for up to 41% of the time!

Managers should maximize their productive efforts by first understanding how they allocate their efforts through a time and motion study. Then they should look to improve processes, delegate tasks, automate, and get training on how to maximize productivity.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Time management trainers always encourage you to plan your activities every day.

This makes intuitive sense. But what does a time and motion study reveal about planning time? We have conducted numerous time and motion studies since 1990 using our proprietary TimeCorder device. Employees track their own time with this portable device, which is easy to use. The results are anonymous, so employees provide honest feedback, resulting in a remarkable 94% participation rate.

One subset of employees that we regularly study is sales reps. Their main job function is to call on prospects and customers, aiming to increase sales and service existing needs. On a weekly basis, their planning time typically takes up 4.8 hours per week, or 10 % of a 47 hour work week. Planning activities are what we refer to as “A priorities” These are activities that affect one’s results a month or more in the future.

Included in these activities are determining long term strategies, territory management, account planning, deciding which customers to contact and presentation preparation. It also includes team meetings to plan strategies and share information, plus planning one’s daily to-do list.

Within the 4.8 hours per week on planning, most sales reps spend about 2 hours planning their daily schedule and activities. Another hour is spent in presentation preparation, and just under an hour in team meetings. The remainder is other planning activities, listed above.

So what do we know about planning and results? Are time management trainers correct to encourage you to do more planning? The answer is yes, to a degree. There is in fact a correlation between daily planning and time spent directly selling to prospects. (Selling time includes making presentations, calling, and sending emails.) The chart below shows four groups of sales reps, distinguished by how much daily planning they do each week.

Those who plan more are able create more time for selling – but only to an extent. Spending 2-3 hours per week, or 24 to 36 minutes per day results in 12.5 hours for selling. This represents 26% of the time. However, too much time spent doing daily planning (over 3 hours per week) becomes counterproductive and as a result, selling time decreases, as shown in the bar on the far right.

So be sure to invest the time to plan well. It’s easy to procrastinate, or to let interruptions get in the way. Instead, take the time to focus on your goals. But don’t go overboard. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

“What a waste of time!”

Do you ever hear this at work? It’s an incriminating observation for what is often just a petty inconvenience. Time was wasted, and someone is to blame. Though it’s curious how no one ever dares to take ownership of the problem. In so many cases, it’s always someone else’s fault. “That guy in the other department wasted my time. Of course I would never waste someone else’s time, let alone my own. But jeez, look at all the waste all over the place.”

We accuse others, but we toil in perfection, never attributing wastefulness to our own actions.

So what exactly do we mean by wasted time?

To understand waste, we first need to understand how time should be spent. When people are spending their time well at work, they’re doing what their job descriptions say they should. They’re managing, or selling, or designing, or processing, or teaching.

That’s what they get paid for, what they excel at, and it’s how others see them. They spend their time on the important activities that create results. These are what we call “A” priorities.

Employees also spend time on activities that support their priorities. These are the “B” responsibilities that need to get done.

Employees occasionally do things that aren’t part of their main job, but are imposed by others. These are their “C” requirements. These activities can be substantial. For instance, administrative tasks add up to about 25% of a manager’s time.

Finally, there is necessary time. At work, employees have to take breaks, eat lunch, use the washroom, and travel to customers. Anything else is non-productive time.

There is plenty of non-productive time during working hours, but that doesn’t always mean it is wasted. For instance, if you get up to stretch your legs for a moment, or gaze out the window to reflect, it would be unfair to classify this as wasted time. There’s a necessity for this. You need to relax and recharge.

So companies should expect some amount of time expenditures that are not always productive. Reboot time is just one type of non-productive time. There are others.

Time not spent on the things that should get done fall into three major categories: personal issues, work habits and corporate impediments.

Personal Issues

On occasion, employees take time from their employers. This is what’s traditionally known as wasted time. It’s the goofing off, the theft of time. This includes some of the following activities:

Personal calls

Long lunches or breaks.

Water cooler chats.

Social media chats.

Entertaining oneself.

Entertaining others

Unnecessary research

Outside interests

Work Habits

The second type of non-productive time involves poor work habits by employees who would never admit to wasting time. In fact, they probably aren’t even aware that their pace is slow. Some of their practices include:

Slow moving activity

Distractions

Poor problem solving

Poor systems knowledge

E-mail cc and virus warnings

Clutter

Administrative tasks

Lack of training

Tardiness

Not following instructions

Corporate Impediments

Many employees are at the high end of efficiency. They are not wasting time personally. Their work habits are top notch. But as efficient as they might be, they can end up wasting time because of factors outside of their control.

Equipment issues

Changing directions

Unclear mandate or job description

Major changes

Legal battles

Others’ Waste

The waste that others cause is one of the biggest reasons why employees’ time is wasted. Some of these include:

Unnecessary emails

Late starting meetings

Meetings without focus

Petty requests

Unclear communication

Mistakes by others

Interruptions

Poorly run meetings

Some waste is inevitable. It’s an expected part of the corporate environment. People will chat with their friends. They’ll daydream now and then. Things will go wrong. The office will never be a perfect place. That’s what makes it interesting. Anyone who seeks perfection is chasing an illusion.

SMARTER WAYS TO REDUCE WASTED TIME

Accept that some portion of work time will be wasted. It will probably be minor. Writing policies about how long water cooler chats should is a waste itself.

Assign meaningful work so that employees keep busy and feel that their contributions are making a difference.

Disconnect employees from anything they don’t need on the internet. Do employees really need access to YouTube, Facebook, or Pinterest at work?

Make employees accountable for their results in performance reviews and in periodic goal setting sessions.

Train employees on soft skills such as supervision, time management, communication, and problem solving.

Provide employee assistance programs for those occasions when pressures from outside work affect what goes on inside work.

Engage in process improvement projects to understand how time is being allocated and to create systemic improvements through automation, re-structuring, and centralization.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

What differentiates top performing sales reps from the rest of the pack? The best sales reps focus their efforts on their most important priorities. This means a) finding qualified prospects, b) determining potential needs, c) closing sales and d) taking responsibility for customer service. But transcending proficiency in these areas is the issue of time. What key priorities should sales reps focus on? How do they spend their time compared to others? Are they maximizing productive time and minimizing time wasters?

So what makes up each of these categories?

Our company, Pace Productivity, has been conducting time studies of knowledge workers since 1990.

We examined productivity measurement data from outside sales reps – those whose daily activities take them out of their offices to customers’ locations. The pie chart above these activities grouped into broad categories. Typically, they add up to about 48 hours per week, including 3 hours of breaks.

The selling category consists of activities designed to prospect for new business. Sales reps need to find, cultivate and maintain relationships with new prospects and existing clients. By keeping their funnel full of prospects, they can maintain a steady stream of business. This category includes such activities as marketing, cold calls, calls to existing customers, sales visits, presentations and writing columns.

On average, these add up to 10.8 hours per week or just 22% of the work week. This is quite surprising to sales managers who often expect their reps to be actively selling for at least 50% of the time. The reality though, is that all kinds of other activities need to be done, and they infringe on selling time.

The good news is that there are superstar reps who excel in selling time. For instance, financial planners as a group spend 27% on this category. Within this group, some individuals achieve over 40% of their time selling. They do this by hiring assistants to handle their administrative and order processing activities.

Typically, sales reps engage in sales activities on 39 different occasions per week. These are direct contacts with customers and prospects, primarily phone calls and meetings with both current customers and prospects.

The duration of sales calls to current customers are longer than those with prospects. Specifically, sales calls with customers typically take 11 minutes each, while those with prospects are only 7 minutes. The prospect calls may be shorter because some of them are just voice mail messages that are left.

When sales reps engage in face-to-face meetings, they spend an average of 29 minutes per meeting with current customers. Meetings with prospects are longer, at 51 minutes. Thus, telephone conversations tend to be short, but once meetings occur, there is a greater opportunity for in-depth discussions.

Understand how your time is spent, and then strive to allocate your efforts to the highest priority activities. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Based on data from a number of our time and motion consulting projects, e-mail is indeed the burden that many employees believe it to be.

Using our TimeCorder device, employees tracked their time on a number of activities, many of which involved using e-mail. We also asked them to track miscellaneous e-mails, that is correspondence that was not connected to priority activities such as managing, selling, or providing customer service.

These included all of the non-value added e-mails that employees need to sort through; internal announcements, queries from co-workers, items forwarded fyi, meeting confirmations and others.

Across a broad number of knowledge workers, these miscellaneous e-mails added up to 3.9 hours per week, much more than the 2.4 hours that employees said they would ideally like to spend on these. Those with activities outside of the office face a larger burden; 4.5 hours per week for field supervisors and 6.2 hours per week for sales reps. Remember: there is a lot more time spent on value-added emails – this is just the “stuff.”

Many of these e-mails are avoidable. Employees find themselves overwhelmed by dozens, if not hundreds of e-mails per day. Curiously though, while everyone complains about the volume of incoming e-mail, few will admit to being the culprits for sending it out.

Remember, if you send out one e-mail and copy twenty people, you have in effect sent out twenty e-mails.

Employees can make better choices to control their incoming e-mail.

Take yourself off distribution lists.

Avoid the use of the Reply All function.

Stop saying “Thanks”. Fellow workers already know that you are an appreciative colleague.

Ask subordinates not to copy you without including a cover note

Unsubscribe from newsletters that are really extended sales pitches

Don’t try to persuade someone through e-mail. Use a phone or meeting instead.

Keep your messages short. Avoid telling stories.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Who works the longest hours? The sales rep trying to firm up a deal? The president who has to solve a delicate legal issue? Not surprisingly, there are a range of work hours, based on results from a number of time studies we have conducted using our proprietary TimeCorder device.

While participants in our studies typically track their time for two weeks, our results are reported on a weekly basis. The chart below shows total work hours, including work done at the office, at clients’ locations and at home. Business travel and breaks during the day are included, though commuting time is not. Overtime is done in the morning, at night, and on the weekends.

The average for all full-time employees is 46.7 hours per week. Within this group, municipal workers generally work 42.5 hours. Many of these are unionized employees with contracts that specify their maximum number of hours. Once negotiated, they generally stick to this The other jobs that are lower than the average do not have a travel component. Employees stay at one location.

Those who are above average have greater responsibilities, more travel, and more people management as part of their jobs.

The chart below shows work hours per week (blue bars). Those who supervise employees have longer work hours and occasions than those who do not. Independent consultants are an exception. Unlike most other employees, their income is directly related to hours worked – they have a different incentive from employees to work long hours.

The scale for the red bars is in minutes. The bars represent typical durations, showing how long each event lasts.

Both scales increase at the same time, however there is not a causal relationship between hours worked and length of duration. Rather, durations increase with added responsibilities. Inside sales reps and receptionists for instance receive a high number of short phone calls or customer visits. Hence their durations are short. Middle managers and presidents on the other hand are more involved with long term planning through meetings. Meanwhile field supervisors show a long duration because their time spent in the field is usually long.

Generally, employees work longer hours than they would like. However, salaried workers do not receive extra compensation for overtime hours. They work more hours than the norm to:

Achieve a level of results beyond expectations in order to obtain a promotion

Avoid stresses elsewhere. (For some, the attraction of work occurs when work becomes like home and home is too much work)

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.